Koen: Some 770 screenshots.
More than a month PC World magazine reviewed PepperPad, and wasn’t quite happy with what they had to offer, now PC Magazine runs a gadget review, where PepperPad receives 1.5 stars out of 5 possible.
“We weren’t impressed by the features either. The rubbery little keys are difficult to type on with any speed or precision, hobbling e-mail. In addition, the touch-screen user interface feels generally balky—often we tapped on buttons (especially in the Web browser) four or five times because we couldn’t tell we had pressed them, only to have all our button-presses take effect several seconds later. The photo application is fine and Web pages looked great, but the browser’s performance left a lot to be desired—it kept us hanging for several seconds at a time—and plug-in support was uneven. For instance, the Pad supports Flash 6 but not yet Flash 7, and streaming movie trailers from Apple’s QuickTime site came through without sound.”
Would the PC Magazine guys give the same treatment to Nokia 770?
Let’s do a point by point walk-through to see what their main complaints are:
Price point. At $850 a pop PepperPad has a lot to offer, but this kind of price range seems to be outside of what most teenagers and gadget lovers budget for their electronics spending. Released at $350, Nokia might suffer from competing PDAs, but it’s at the point where it’s still acceptable. However, the price for a 20 GB Creative Zen with 3.8″ screen just went down to $180, so expect heated competition in the field. That’s 20 gigs, folks, support for all Microsoft DRM formats, but no wireless.
Which brings us to the next point. Support for Microsoft DRM. Be it Yahoo! Music or MovieLink, the DRM is here to stay, and while one can complain, when it becomes too restrictive, it’s unlikely just to go away. More of the media we consume daily is using Apple or Microsoft DRM and neither PepperPad nor Nokia 770 have anything to offer. They’re going to lose points in PC Magazine reviews.
Large video files. You’ve got a nice large crisp screen, you want to watch the last episode of Simpsons or your favorite Matrix movie. Sony gets it, but I don’t think Nokia does, as reduced storage capabilities are surely going to kill the enthusiasm of the fans trying to upload something worthwhile to their devices.
Battery life. PepperPad got points ducked on that one, and Nokia 770 is going to lose some as well. You and I know why.
Overall, the chances are not too good, but there’s always a chance that sales will pick up, so none of that would matter.
T3, world’s #1 gadget magazine, as they proudly claim on their Web site, reviewed Nokia 770 accompanied by gratuitous shots of scantily clad women (so there are even more reasons to check their review!)
They seem to like it:
You’re going to need a pair of slacks with some pretty cavernous pockets to carry around Nokia’s new 770 Internet Tablet, because this purty portable boasts a massive 800×480 widescreen.
LinuxDevices: Maemo developers appraise Nokia 770 prototypes
Mike Rowehl: Some first impressions of new Nokia 770 accompanied by.
Also, comparison of Palm Tungsten and Nokia 770:
Karoliina posted 25 photos of her Nokia 770 in this gallery.
Surplus Computers has 256 MB RS-MMC card on sale with free shipping for all you Nokia 770 owners. This is not an affiliate or kickback link, I just posted it since the price is right, however, if you do want to get affiliate commission off your own purchase, get an account with FatWallet, then head to Surplus Computers page on FatWallet and click from there - you will earn sweet 18c, which will surely give you headways for financial stability in the future, after all the money you spent on 770.
A review of another happy user:
The software that comes with the developer device still has some flaws, but that was to be expected. Localization is perfect, but the video player crashed the OS the first time I tried to access the IceAge2 trailer video clip, and the unit rebooted. - Ah! As I’m writing this, I’m just geting an optical and acoustical warning that the battery is nearly empty. This is really nice and gives you enough time to close any open applications. - The second time I tried to watch the trailer I got an “unknown file type” error, but it worked afterwards. On testing I’m still getting ocassionally “unknown file type” errors. The audio player lacks a convenient method to add whole directories for playing, or I was not able to find it, which would mean it might be not intuitive enough. I put some MP3 files on the RS-MMC card and built a playlist by hand. The player seems to forget this list occassionally, however. At least I had to rebuild it three or four times until it kept stable.
Hmm, I sense another delay.
MobilePlanet (never heard of them before, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a good store) has Nokia 770 available for pre-order. The price is unknown, and over at Global Batteries a battery for 770 is available.
Several images of me playing with OQO. Overall, pretty impressive, except for keyboard being not too convenient, and mouse buttons not too convenient.
I asked them about Nokia 770, they didn’t really think of it as competition.
Thanks a lot to Mike Arrington for organizing the event.
Probably of no use to the 770 users, so filed under dev category, but the guys from GtkPerf posted screenshots of their product running under Maemo. GtkPerf is a unified benchmark for testing Gtk performance.
